Kylene's Birthday

We celebrated Kylene's 30th birthday and had a lot of fun getting stuff together for her party.

We made her wear this shirt I made for her. If anyone is fabulous, it's Kylene!

Mandi did an awesome job with the decorations.

We drank homemade Sangria--some of the best Sangria any of us have ever had.

And I surprised her with this awesome cake! Tall, whimsical, almost-tipping-over on the outside.

Rainbow on the inside!!!!!!!

I used 2 boxes of yellow cake mix and split them up into 6 parts and just food colored all the slices. Then, I made a marshmallow type icing. (The kind you add boiling water too.) I wish this idea was original, but alas, I got it from another blogger.

Here's the cake without the icing yet.
And we finished off the night with some pop rocks. It was lots of fun and I had a great time baking again! I'm also really excited to make some more shirts with the transfer paper!

Journal

I got tired of the old journal cover, so I went for this one. I just used simple black cardstock and a sliver sharpie. (I'm kind of into birds these days.)

The Evolution of Mom's Present

It started out as a Christmas present and was a pattern I was planning to invent as it went along. (My favorite way to sew is without a pattern and winging it.) It also started out as orange, but I wasn't pleased with how it looked, so I turned it the other way out which made it unable to be more than a clutch. Although it's super cute, I knew a clutch wouldn't be very useful for my mom. So...another purse for me and onto a new one for mom!


At this point, Christmas had come and gone, so, in hopes of completing a purse for her by her birthday I decided just to go for a pattern. And her birthday came and went, but I was able to crank it out last week and got it to her just a few days after her birthday. I'm glad she likes it!

New Pattern

Here's a purse from my new pattern. Super easy to make and I LOVE the fabric!
Ummm...I think I need to chill out on purses. It's becoming a slight compulsion.

Clutch

Work has been a bit taxing the past few days, so I finally made time to sew in order to unwind. My one rule was that it had to be with fabric I already had. I've already got a huge tupperware container full of fabric scraps...and before I buy more, I need to start using what I have!

Anyway, it took me about 1 1/2 hours to make start to finish. The zipper was NOT my favorite part, but worked out okay. I also accidentally used interfacing that's heavier than the fabric so the inside fabric looks kind of wavy, but no one will see that!


I'll post pictures of our finally-decorated apartment soon!

30 Second Project

Before:

And after:

All I did was sew the front of a greeting card onto a cardstock journal. Easy and fun!

Sick Day

I took a day off of work thanks to this cold bug that's going around. A day in a middle school cafeteria just wasn't what I needed to get better. Instead, I completed Ali's new beds. In our old apartment, he had two chairs that he slept on, but they don't fit into our new place. Dog beds are too expensive, so I just bought a couple of body pillows and some sale fabric. I think he likes the white fleecy one better than the plaid flannel.